Dominic (32 page)

picking through it with the excitement of a child.

“Treasure,” she breathed.

Vincent watched her fondly. She’d asked nothing of where he’d been or why he’d been gone so long. A Human woman would have been al over

him with curiosity.

Aside from the diminished glow of her skin, there was something else different about her, he noticed. Her overal appearance was somehow more

refined. Mil icent must’ve taken her in hand in the short time he’d been gone, for her golden hair had been tamed in flattering twists and curls, and her

dress had been altered to better fit her.

Marco pointed at her where she stil rummaged through Vincent’s booty. “I’d keep a close eye on her. She steals.”

“She does
not
steal,” said Cara, irritated.

“What do you cal the hoard of objects you’ve amassed in the corner of my library in less than a day’s visit?” He pointed up the stairs. Her eyes

fol owed the length of his arm and then lost interest.

“What do you cal the hoard of objects,” she mocked, pointing in imitation of him and clearly not comprehending the concept of ownership.

“I cal them
my
belongings!” Marco shouted. “And what were you doing in my study just now?” He stood back, eyeing her as though to trying to

detect any lumps and bumps on her person that might indicate the presence of contraband.

“Belongings? I don’t belonging.”

Marco smacked his hand to his own forehead, appearing to be at his wit’s end. “Gods, it’s been this way al day. Her, speaking gibberish. Half the

time I suspect she does that to irritate me as wel .”

Smiling slightly, Cara shrugged, and the red dress slipped off her shoulder, affording them al a glimpse of the upper curve of a ful breast. Marco’s

voice dwindled off, and a taut silence fil ed the room.

Landon cleared his throat.

Vincent shifted. The groin of his trousers was suddenly far too tight. He reached for her. “I’m pleased the visit went wel , but I think it’s best that we

take our leave of you. Tel Mil icent—”

“Nonsense!” Mil icent reentered the salon. With a smile she appropriated Cara’s arm, leading her away. “We can’t let you go home to a cold

house after your long day, Vincent. I’m sure you must be ravenous. Do join us for dinner.”

As Vincent stared after them, feeling as if his favorite toy had just been taken from him, Mil icent’s voice floated behind her. “And Cara’s to stay

with us for the next few days. For propriety’s sake. You can’t have an unwed female living in the home of two bachelors. How would it look?”

Cara sent him a saucy, innocent smile over her shoulder. “How would it look?”

7

S
omewhere around the end of the third course of bread and brie and the presentation of sorbet and strawberries for dessert, Cara found herself abruptly

taken out of herself. Though no one ful y understood this description when she was later questioned, it was the only way she would be able to characterize

the bizarre experience.

One moment she’d been sitting before the white damask-covered dining table at Marco’s home, gathered there for a repast prepared by his wife

and her servants.

And a moment later, she’d found herself somewhere else entirely. Two men—both strangers—had taken her there, holding her captive in

sumptuous, elegant surroundings that were completely foreign to her.

They thought her stupid. Worthless. Only good for fucking. They expected absolute obedience. Something she no longer wished to give.

Before she was taken, she had been sitting at that immaculate table among familiar faces, smiling because she wanted to. Because she felt

happy. She’d been in the company of Vincent and two of his brothers, Marco and Anthony, and the other man they cal ed a friend, Landon.

She’d been closely observing Mil icent, the only other female at the table, in order to determine the uses for each of the utensils that had been

precisely stationed alongside her plate. Never having dined in a formal setting, al this was new to her.

A plate, she’d surmised, was the appel ation for the flat, opalescent disk with a thin circlet of gold around its outer edge. Periodical y, these disks

were whisked away by servants in crisp black and white, only to be replaced by another dish, with a similar design, containing delectable food of another

kind.

Most recently, a fluted bowl encrusted with pearls had arrived, set before her by servants who seemed to work as diligently at making themselves

invisible as she sought to make herself the opposite. It was fil ed with a pink, mushy substance and plump strawberries.

Vincent’s handsome face smiled at her, and he pointedly lifted a pronged utensil, indicating she was now to employ it, the smal er of the two

remaining pieces of cutlery that had been placed in careful readiness before each diner.

Cara lightly ran a fingertip along the slender, gleaming smoothness of a handle, then a neck, then onward to the part of the instrument that drew

her. At its tip, it divided into four tines. They were sharp.

“It’s a fork,” someone whispered to her. Mil icent. The female. Wife of Marco.

Somehow she’d already known what the utensil was cal ed. Words seemed to be coming more easily now, though from where they came she

didn’t know.

Stil , she smiled her thanks at the woman and lifted the fork, finding it cold in her hand. She turned it in her fingers, strangely mesmerized.

Candlelight flickered off its golden sheen, momentarily blinding her.

“Cara?” It was Vincent’s voice. Vincent, the beautiful male who fil ed her with himself and who gave her his seed when he pleased. The one who

had given her a dress and whose eyes were blue and intel igent and kind. The one who kept her safe. Her creator.

Though he raised his voice when she didn’t respond, the volume of it seemed strangely muted. She touched his lips with her fingers as he

repeated her name, wanting to hang on to his voice, to him.

He took her upper arms in his hands and shook her, his face growing ever more concerned. He repeated her name, but the sound of him faded

away….

…Silenced by new voices.

Her finger hurt. She looked down and saw she stil held the fork and had pressed the tip of her finger to the tips of its tines, applying constant and

steady pressure. Suddenly they pricked and broke her skin. Four points of blood wel ed.

Then, with astonishing suddenness, she found herself gone. Whisked away from Vincent and his family and their table.

Now she inhabited another place that was dreamlike and eerie. She was standing in a pool of soft light. Candlelight. There were nine silver

tapers in the candelabrum on a small, bare table. Wax melted down their lengths, like pricks slowly ejaculating.

It was as if only the immediate vicinity in which she stood existed in this world, but nothing further. No distance.

Two plants that were strange, with long arms, undulated into her vision. Somehow she sensed they were poisonous.

And then she saw that the plants were in fact two men seated upon cushions of a black velvet chaise longue. Though she felt them studying

her, for some reason she could not clearly see their features in return.

“Like Sleeping Beauty in Perrault’s tale, she pricks her finger and falls to slumbering once again,” the larger of the two men said.

He wanted her. She scented his desire even amid the cloaking scents of incense riding the air.

The other slender, olive-skinned one was less interested in such things, but his gaze was riveted on her, too, in a way that frightened her even

more than the other one’s.

The larger man rose and stood before her, his palms covering her breasts, massaging them through the fabric of her pretty, ruffled red dress.

The dress Vincent had given her.

She tried to curl her fingers and claw at his face. But to her dismay, she instead found herself sliding her own palms up the front of his red

satin vest.

He stroked her hair, and she could smell his awful need to bend her to his Will. “Take off your gown.”

“You’re wasting time,” the slender man on the couch told him.

But the man beside her continued to stare at her with his black eyes. “I want her to take it off. For me.”

She opened her mouth to refuse but instead felt her lips curve into a beguiling smile. She wanted to push him away, but could not seem to act

against him.

Tilting her head at a coquettish angle, she lifted her hands to the fastenings of her dress and began to do as he’d bade her.

It was then she realized to her horror that things had reverted to the way they’d been before, back in the time when she’d existed without Will.

Before Vincent had brought her to life.

Before she’d become Real.

Now, as in that uncertain time before, she existed only to serve.

With each garment that fell, her heart fell a little further as well until she was naked, heartbroken. And as each part of her anatomy was

uncovered, the man with the black eyes touched it, tainting her with his fingers and his mouth. He was unhurried, certain of his ability to hold her here

in this terrible limbo as long as he Willed it.

“It’s true then,” he said in growing excitement. “She shimmers, yet she’s Human.”

Human.

She turned her head and saw the table that was covered in pristine white, neatly set with plates and golden cutlery. The others were stil there. She

could see herself seated there as wel , ful y dressed, stil and deathly silent.

Vincent was speaking urgently to her, trying to wake her. His brothers, Landon, and Mil icent were as wel . They had al gathered around her,

looking so concerned.

The flat of her persecutor’s hand slapped her right buttock, snapping her attention back to him. As it slid up her back to grasp her nape, his

other hand slid down her belly and slipped between the front of her legs. Without warning, a thumb drove inside her feminine slit, and a middle finger

rammed inside the muscled ring of her anus, lifting her a few inches from the floor.

His face drew near to hers. “You’re a sweet little cunt. I can see why he wants you.”

“Cara!”

Hands came. Warmer, kinder hands from that other, better place in Earth World. They clutched her shoulders and stroked her cheek. Trying to woo

her back. She swayed, wanting to go.

“Listen to him, calling for you,” whispered a harsh voice at her ear. “But you don’t want him. You want me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she breathed. Her voice was lilting, well modulated, and pleasant, as it had been designed to be.

“That’s good. A good girl. Kneel for me.”

He turned her then to kneel on the couch, her knees straddling the outsides of those of the slender, olive-skinned man who was still seated

there. A hand between her shoulder blades pushed her forward, toward him. To keep from toppling down upon him, she braced her hands on the high

back of the couch on either side of his shoulders.

The slender man blinked up at her, and his eyes flashed silver and then ruby, startling her. She saw then, as she hadn’t before, that he was

naked, garbed only in circlets of leather clasped around his waist, neck, and wrists, all of which were adorned with various charms. Between his legs

his thick, sallow-skinned cock stood high, its tip angled menacingly toward her slit.

Behind her, clothing rustled. Another man’s cock found its way between her legs, cold and prickly—a shock to her warm skin.

She wanted to close her legs but found she couldn’t. The strange creature before her had spread his knees wide between hers and stretched

his arms outward on each side of himself along the back of the couch. His ruby eyes gazed up at her, enjoying her helplessness. Yet unlike the other

man, he seemed in no hurry to join himself to her.

And then, like the sting of some cruel insect, the fat cock of the man behind her drove into her pussy. Her pink, fluted nether lips opened for

him in a silent, panicked scream. He retracted almost immediately and then returned to sting again and again. She hadn’t been mated to him before.

She would have remembered. His rod was squat. Stunted. A third the size of Vincent’s.

Her traitorous body willingly adjusted to hug its puny shape, and her cream saturated her feminine passage to make his sojourn within her an

enjoyable one. Her agonized heart contracted with shame even as her vaginal walls contracted, forming a sheathe that would better suit so small a

male appendage.

She was a Shimmerskin, after all. Eager to please.

“That’s it, little
puttana.”
Bone slammed, bruising bone. He wanted to hurt her. To own her like Marco wished to own things. Why?

High along the insides of her thighs, his balls jounced and thumped, bloated with seed he planned to force on her. Her channel clenched in

rejection, but this only excited him. He slapped her rear again and bit the slope of her shoulder like an animal.

The creature before her observed all this, his expression now a combination of mild curiosity and boredom. His hand went to his prick, idly

stroking it with clawed fingers.

“Gods. Oooh, Gods!” The man behind her shuddered over her, moaning. Within seconds, he spewed into her, flooding her tissues with his

repulsive, unwanted gift. His arms wrapped around her waist, and he held her close, gasping over her.

Eventually he lifted away and something cold touched the plateau of her lower back, making her jump. She glanced over her shoulder and